Sixers win, but Jazz leave with another moral victory

Winning is not something the Utah Jazz are going to experience a lot of this year, but the hope is that they come out away from the 2024-25 season feeling like they improved.

On Saturday night, the Jazz went into the fourth quarter tied with the Philadelphia 76ers and played a really close game right to the end. Eventually the Sixers walked away with a 114-111 victory, in large part thanks to a combined 64 points from Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey.

But the Jazz didn’t leave the Delta Center feeling bad.

“I don’t think that anybody should walk away from this game discouraged at all,” Jazz head coach Will Hardy said. “Losing hurts. Losing is not fun, but there’s a lot of really good stuff happening on our team right now.

“The cohesion of the group on both sides of the ball has grown a lot in the last couple of weeks. I think the way that our team is communicating with each other has continued to grow. I think we’re playing some good basketball.”

Player development remains the Jazz’s top priority and it will continue to stay that way as the season progresses. Development, in this case, is a catch-all term that includes how the team develops together, how players get use to playing within a system and of course how each individual player grows.

Brice Sensabaugh

There’s been a ton of attention paid to the three rookies on the Jazz roster — Cody Williams, Isaiah Collier and Kyle Filipowski — but the Jazz are also still trying to maximize the potential of Walker Kessler and the healthy second-year players — Keyonte George and Brice Sensabaugh.

Against the Sixers, Sensabaugh scored a season-high 20 points, hitting 3 of 5 from 3-point range and going 5 of 5 from the charity stripe.

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But it’s never Sensabaugh’s scoring that concerns Hardy or any of the Jazz staff. Sensabaugh came into the NBA as a scorer. That was the basketball superpower that got him to the NBA.

What the Jazz want to see more of is Sensabaugh’s playmaking, which stood out quite a bit last season when he was playing in the G League.

“My favorite part of the game was the lob that he threw to Walker, because I don’t worry about Bryce making shots,” Hardy said. “He has shown me, us, you guys, time and time again, that he can make shots.

“The part of his game that I think is exceptional, that he maybe doesn’t show off enough, is his playmaking, and when he’s able to couple those things together, then you’re really hard to guard.”

Though it resulted in just two assists for Sensabaugh on Saturday, there were plenty of times throughout the night that he played on the ball in pick-and-roll or through other actions and was extremely patient and careful, which is something that’s been on his mind a lot.

“I know I definitely have the ability. I think for me, it’s just giving myself the best chance with my pace,” Sensabaugh said. “I think in the past, I’ve kind of just been thinking and playing at 100 miles per hour, but I feel like this game, I was able to slow down a little bit and and kind of read what’s going on and just let it unfold in front of me.”

Those are the kinds of things the Jazz are looking for — the small, incremental shifts in focus or approach that could lead to better things down the road. That’s what this season is about.

So the players aren’t happy with losing games, but they are competing with good teams and there are signs that development is headed in the right direction.